LUST AND PASSION IN SOUTH AMERICA
Reuniting the principal players from Josef von Sternberg’s classic late silentUnderworld, The Showdown brings the burly, surly duo of George Bancroft and Fred Kohler — along with the stunning Evelyn Brent — down to the steamy stomping grounds of South America for a wild ride through the emotional jungle! In the tradition of wilderness soap operas like Red Dust and Mogambo, the story takes place in the lugubrious equatorial heat, where lust and passion boil over amongst four isolated oil wildcatters and one lone New York City woman. Director Victor Schertzinger’s expert hand guides the cast through all the juicy melodrama one would expect from such a sticky situation; “[i]ndeed, ‘The Showdown’ — with its claustrophobic tensions expressed through gesture — seems crafted to give full play to what silent filmmaking does best.” (BAM/PFA)
Dir. Victor Schertzinger, 1928, 35mm, 80 min. (Archival 35mm print courtesy of the Library of Congress)